Summer 2018 Week 5

The episode starts off with a dream Setsuna has about Sara being burned alive. While this seems like a prophecy now, later in the episode we’re lead to believe it’s all just a misunderstanding, but I’m still not no sure about that.

Then, not in a dream, Sara needs Setsuna to capture some venomous sea snakes because she believes the venom can be used to help cure Soot Blight Syndrome. She also apparently believes Setsuna will be immune to the venom, should he get bitten in the process.

Not that this next part was very important for the episode, but breaking from the norm, Setsuna doesn’t freak out in any way when Rinne walks into the bath he was using. Maybe you’re new to anime, but that’s not usually how these things work, at least one of them should have caused a scene.

After this shocking development, however, we get the weekly Island “montage while someone sings in the background,” which as some of you know, I’m not particularly a fan of.

But, moving on with the actual plot of the episode, Sara believes that she’s supposed to go back in time, have a child with Setsuna, and then that child will grow up to be her. Basically it’s a never-ending loop of her being her own mother, so I don’t really see what that solves in itself.

Sara believes she had the power to stop Soot Blight Syndrome from occurring, but as it turns out her family had actually just been killing off all the babies born with it, making it appear as if the disease was dormant for roughly 10 years. It also turns out that Sara isn’t her own mother, they were just both branded in the same spot.

While this is a convenient explanation for now, it technically doesn’t disprove Sara’s belief that she is her own mother, but apparently it’s enough proof for her. I have a feeling this will come back later on in the series.

After losing the first match against Connie, it seems Ayano still doesn’t fully understand who her opponent actually is. For the next match, Ayano and her partner, Izumi, try a new strategy to defeat Connie, who still isn’t allowing her partner to play.

However, Connie’s teammate joins in on the last point of the match to win the game for their team, much to Connie’s chagrin. She does this because Connie appeared to have injured one of her legs during the match, and probably would have been defeated otherwise.

After the match Ayano tries to make excuses as to why she lost, and refuses to admit defeat.

We later learn that Connie doesn’t actually seem to be that bad of a person, which is a strange development considering how she was originally portrayed. That said, after the scene of her getting along with all her teammates in the bath, she suddenly goes back to being evil.

My assumption is that Connie isn’t actually evil, but rather it’s still Ayano’s mother who is the primary antagonist. Connie and Ayano both just happen to be competing for the attention of the same person, so they naturally view each other as rivals.

Also, while I didn’t explicitly mention it yet this week, Connie is the student Ayano’s mother took in after abandoning Ayano and the rest of her family.

To start off, the action animation for this series is just as flawless as ever. It looks like we’ll be getting an even greater emphasis on these kinds of scenes this season compared to the previous two, and I’m completely okay with that.

One thing I have mixed feelings about, however, was the wild west style saloon in the middle of town. I get that Kenny’s character design is based on a cowboy, but the world of Attack on Titan is supposed to be set somewhere in Europe (most likely Germany) so why is there a wild west style saloon in the middle of town?

Moving on from that inconsistency, it would appear that Kenny has some sort of personal reason for fighting against Levi which is more than simply because he’s getting paid to do it. For some reason I feel like he’s actually doing it as a mentor and wants Levi to grow from the experience.

Also, in a previous week I mentioned my lack of understanding about how the guns which Kenny’s squad use work, but they were explained in a bit more detail this time around. Each barrel carries six shots, so when they replace them, it’s kind of like replacing a revolving chamber.

But now, onto the story of the episode. Armin kills his first human in order to save Jean, leading to him having an existential crisis. It’s then revealed that the other titan shifters are planning to either eat Eren themselves, or more likely, have someone else eat him.

We next see Levi and Hange using both physical and psychological torture to get information out of the first interior squad, the ones who did the same thing, but for the crown. And finally, Eren and Historia are taken to the true king, Historia’s father, who seems to be in hiding for some reason.

At the end of the episode it’s also revealed that Levi’s last name is Ackerman, just like Mikasa’s. I’m predicting that he’s her half-sibling because although he also has black hair, nobody has ever mentioned that he looks “oriental” like they do with Mikasa.

We went to an inn with Yui this week and she ended up inviting us to go into the outdoor bath with her. Now, this next part may surprise you, but we accepted. Do you know what that means? We’re not some standard, spineless, anime protagonist!

However, after that she appears to be embarrassed about sleeping in the same room, because that’s somehow worse? I’m not really sure I follow her logic here, but whatever, you do you, Yui. We then go outside with Yui to look at the stars because we have to do at least one cheesy thing.

Overall, this felt like a good episode to end Yui’s arc on, so hopefully that means next week we’ll be getting a different girl. Yui’s great and all, but she doesn’t really have much of a personality so she’s not the most interesting character.

Momonga has to come up with an explanation for his subordinates as to why Carne Village is so important to him. I was pretty sure the real reason was because he didn’t want the humans to die, but from the explanation he gave that doesn’t really seem to be the case.

He explains that Nfirea is creating a new potion for him and so must be protected at all costs along with his grandmother and Enri because it’s believed if he has those two, he’ll continue to put out good results. However, the rest of the villagers’ lives don’t matter to Ainz Ooal Gown.

Next there was an uncomfortable scene about the size of children while Ainz Ooal Gown was making his way to visit the Giant of the East and Demon Snake of the West with Aura. I don’t remember whether Aura is the boy or girl of the twins, but either way this scene was pretty awkward.

In the end, Lord Ainz subjugates both the Giant and the Demon Snake, neither of which are actually a Giant or a Demon Snake. It then appears he’s going to send his new subjects to attack Carne Village in order to test Lupisregina’s resolve in protecting the village from harm.

Fights involving the Pleiades Battle Maids are some of my favorite of this series, so I’m looking forward to seeing Lupisregina in action next episode.

As we saw at the end of last week’s episode, Diablo is tasked with preventing a war between the city he resides in, and the Elves who wish to take Shera back to their homeland. Diablo and the gang then meet the lord of the city, who used to be a famous hero and will likely become a more important character in the future.

Next, we were introduced to a new member of the group, Imperial Knight Alicia Cristela, who has been tasked with working alongside Diablo to stop the war. However, Diablo doesn’t like Alicia because he thinks she’s too perfect, which makes him uncomfortable.

Ever the concerned Demon Lord, Diablo then buys a new weapon, a giant scythe, which is such a weak weapon that he’s able to go all out against his opponents without fear of killing them. Considering he’s a Demon Lord, I really wish he would just not care about the lives of those he fights.

Shera is then captured by some bounty hunters and the white knight Emile Bichel Berger comes to her rescue, because he’s a defender of all women. We learn that he won’t execute the kidnappers, but instead simply beat the appreciation of women into them, something I found amusing.

While I liked this episode and like this series overall, it moves at an extremely slow pace. Hopefully it will be greenlit for a second season, because I don’t really think it’s going to get very far story-wise this season.

The beach volleyball tournament the girls have been training for is officially underway and appears to be taking place at what’s basically Sea World. The place is referred to as a “marine park” so I don’t know what else that would be.

In the first round, Haruka and Kanata goes up against Ai and Mai, the girls who got the pink swimsuits Haruka originally wanted to wear. So, as you can see, right off the bat the stakes couldn’t be any higher. Haruka and Kanata were already embarrassed by these girls once, and they won’t allow it to happen again.

We learn (or maybe we already learned this) that Ai and Mai are actually indoor volleyball players. Because of this revelation, I also learned that indoor and beach volleyball aren’t actually played the same way, maybe you all already knew that though.

Ai and Mai don’t even know what a pokey is. What a bunch of amateurs, even Haruka and I know what that is now.

Haruka and Kanata manage to win the first match due to their use of the pokey, but their opponents are able to quickly adapt for the next match. We didn’t get to see the end of the next match this episode, so that’s likely where the next episode is going to start off.

However, we did see the end of Emily and Claire’s match, which they won by the way. As it turns out, Emily and Claire are kind of a big deal considering they placed second at nationals. Will they end up being the final hurdle for Haruka and Kanata at the end of the season?

The episode starts off with Rachel worrying about dying once again for some unimaginable reason. In case you don’t remember, her one wish is to die, so there’s literally no good explanation for why she’s worried about dying.

The pair is still stuck in the gas chamber from last episode, but a ceiling tile has fallen out, revealing a potential escape route. Now, here’s my first problem with this particular episode (Rachel is a problem with every episode), the ceiling tile looked metal and heavy, so how did they not hear it fall?

Rachel then finds a keycard in the air vents and brings it back down to Zack, but not before smashing the gas mask which would probably still have been useful. Zack then proceeds to bend the keycard so it can’t be used to open the door. What a team.

Rachel then decides to blow up the entire room they’re in by igniting the gas with some batteries and a piece of wire. Sometimes Rachel has an IQ of 5, and other times it’s 200. She’s really all over the place and doesn’t make any sense.

After they escape the gas chamber, the pair fall asleep in a hallway and we see Zack dreaming about his time in an orphanage when he was forced to bury the other children who died. The next room has a puzzle involving a doll house which looks like the orphanage from Zack’s dream.

Now, I found this next puzzle to be way too easy to solve, and so did Zack, but that was kind of the point. The doll house has to be set up in a way that matches the dream we just saw Zack having. I thought this was a fairly interesting way to bring up his back story, so I’ll admit this show did a good job there.

Moving on to the final room (or what appears to be the final room), there are two mystery substances which must be injected. One is harmless, and one is poison. Zack decides to inject them both into himself because he doesn’t want to rely on Rachel, or so he says.

After this episode, I’m beginning to think that Rachel is actually just pretending to be helpless and ready to die. I think she’s acting that way in order to get Zack to help her escape, and then she’s planning to get away from him somehow. It’s the only way her insistence on being killed by him makes any sense.

This week’s monster is Cedar Pollen which enters the body through the eye. As usual, Red Blood Cell is near the danger zone and has to be saved by White Blood Cell, but even after killing it he isn’t sure what it is. So what does he do? He tastes it like any White Blood Cell would.

We also meet the Memory Cell this week. He’s like the crazy conspiracy theorist of the body that causes everything to go wrong. He has a book of prophecies which describes an allergic reaction to Cedar Pollen, but everything in it is written down to cause the most amount of panic possible.

In reality, Cedar Pollen is harmless, but it’s the body’s overreaction to it that causes the symptoms we associate with it. B Cell sprays the Cedar Pollen with too much antibody, so in response the Mast Cell releases too much histamine to combat it.

This chain reaction continues until an emergency allergic reaction begins, causing sneezing, itchy eyes, and various other symptoms. In the end, Red Blood Cell delivers a steroid medicine to relieve the symptoms, but that in itself is a huge catastrophe for the body.

The steroid is shown as a Terminator-like killer robot which goes on a rampage, destroying everything that was involved with the allergic reaction. In the end, the cells all decided that although everything went wrong, there was no other option, thus explaining how the body reacts the same way next time.

Out of all the episodes of Cells at Work! so far, I think I actually learned the most from this one.

The episode opens with Yuuto getting beat up by one of his subordinates, Siegrune, in what appears to be a training session. Yuuto never actually has to fight anyone in this episode though, so it’s unclear exactly why this scene was added here.

The war between the Wolf and Lightning clans is now under way. Siegrune fights the enemy commander (whose name I’m not even going to try to spell) as seen in the OP of the anime, but this fight doesn’t last very long. Yuuto then retreats his army to lay a trap for his enemy.

Let me also take this time to say that the fights in this anime are so boring. The setup to the fights aren’t all that interesting, and the fights themselves aren’t visually stunning by any stretch of the imagination. I would have preferred the series focus on the politics of this world rather than the wars (kind of like Overlord).

The enemy leader and his army are eventually defeated by luring them to a river which had previously been dammed by the Wolf clan and their allies. Once the enemy is in position, the dam is broken and the floodwaters wash the Lightning clan away.

Although this doesn’t kill the leader of the Lightning clan, it’s assumed that he won’t be posing a threat again any time soon if at all. All of the Lightning clan’s land was also taken over by the Wolf clan, but it was never said what became of the clan itself.

Conclusion

If you’re watching any of these 10 anime this season, leave a comment to let me know what you thought of this week’s episodes. Also let me know if there are any standout series I’m missing this season. Since I’m only watching things streaming on Crunchyroll, I’m sure I’m missing out on a few.

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